Essays, Philosophical, Historical, and Literary PDF Download

Author: William Belsham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Author: Wilfrid Sellars
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401022917
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
In pulling these essays together for inclusion in one volume I do not believe that I have done them violence. Since they originally appeared at different times and places they constitute a scattered object. Never theless, to the author's eye they have unities of theme and development which, if they fail to give them the true identity of the book, may (to adapt a metaphor from Hume) generate those smooth and easy transi tions of the imagination which arouse dispositions appropriate to sur veying such identical objects. For the juxtaposition of historical and systematic studies I make no apology. It has been suggested, with a friendly touch of malice, that if Science and Metaphysics consists, as its subtitle proclaims, of Variations on Kantian Themes, it would be no less accurate to sub-title my historical essays 'variations on Sellars ian themes'. But this is as it should be. Phi losophy is a continuing dialogue with one's contemporaries, living and dead, and if one fails to see oneself in one's respondent and one's re spondent in oneself, there is confrontation but no dialogue. The historian, as Collingwood points out, becomes Caesar's contemporary by learning to think Caesar's thoughts. And it is because Plato thought so many of our thoughts that he is our contemporary and companion.

Author: Bernard Williams
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400827108
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Before his death in 2003, Bernard Williams planned to publish a collection of historical essays, focusing primarily on the ancient world. This posthumous volume brings together a much wider selection, written over some forty years. His legacy lives on in this masterful work, the first collection ever published of Williams's essays on the history of philosophy. The subjects range from the sixth century B.C. to the twentieth A.D., from Homer to Wittgenstein by way of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Sidgwick, Collingwood, and Nietzsche. Often one would be hard put to say which part is history, which philosophy. Both are involved throughout, because this is the history of philosophy written philosophically. Historical exposition goes hand in hand with philosophical scrutiny. Insights into the past counteract blind acceptance of present assumptions. In his touching and illuminating introduction, Myles Burnyeat writes of these essays: "They show a depth of commitment to the history of philosophy seldom to be found nowadays in a thinker so prominent on the contemporary philosophical scene." The result celebrates the interest and importance to philosophy today of its near and distant past. The Sense of the Past is one of three collections of essays by Bernard Williams published by Princeton University Press since his death. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument, selected, edited, and with an introduction by Geoffrey Hawthorn, and Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, selected, edited, and with an introduction by A. W. Moore, make up the trio.

Author: Pierre Duhem
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 9780872203082
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
"Here, for the first time in English, are the philosophical essays - including the first statement of the "Duhem Thesis" - that formed the basis for Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, together with new translations of the historiographical essays presenting the equally celebrated "Continuity Thesis" by Pierre Duhem (1861-1916), a founding figure of the history and philosophy of science. Prefaced by an introduction on Duhem's intellectual development and continuing significance, here as well are important subsequent essays in which Duhem elaborated key concepts and critiqued such contemporaries as Henri Poincare and Ernst Mach. Together, these works offer a lively picture of the state of science at the turn of the century while addressing methodological issues that remain at the center of debate today."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Author: Richard Rorty
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521273305
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Lectures delivered as a series at Johns Hopkins University during 1982-83.

Author: J. B. Schneewind
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199563012
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
J.B. Schneewind presents a selection of his published essays on ethics, the history of ethics and moral psychology, together with a new piece offering an intellectual autobiography. The essays range across the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, with a particular focus on Kant and his relation to earlier thinkers.

Author: Stephen Gaukroger
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069120957X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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The first book to address the historical failures of philosophy—and what we can learn from them Philosophers are generally unaware of the failures of philosophy, recognizing only the failures of particular theories, which are then remedied with other theories. But, taking the long view, philosophy has actually collapsed several times, been abandoned, sometimes for centuries, and been replaced by something quite different. When it has been revived it has been with new aims that are often accompanied by implausible attempts to establish continuity with a perennial philosophical tradition. What do these failures tell us? The Failures of Philosophy presents a historical investigation of philosophy in the West, from the perspective of its most significant failures: attempts to provide an account of the good life, to establish philosophy as a discipline that can stand in judgment over other forms of thought, to set up philosophy as a theory of everything, and to construe it as a discipline that rationalizes the empirical and mathematical sciences. Stephen Gaukroger argues that these failures reveal more about philosophical inquiry and its ultimate point than its successes ever could. These failures illustrate how and why philosophical inquiry has been conceived and reconceived, why philosophy has been thought to bring distinctive skills to certain questions, and much more. An important and original account of philosophy’s serial breakdowns, The Failures of Philosophy ultimately shows how these shortcomings paradoxically reveal what matters most about the field.

Author: Jan Patočka
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
"Finally available in English, this book is a challenging meditation on the deep tensions between nihilism and liberation which prevail at the core of the "problematicity" defining the historical condition of modern man. Patocka is the most important Czech philosopher of this century and one of the greatest names in the history of the phenomenological movement". -- Jacques Taminiaux Boston University

Author: Akeel Bilgrami
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113619777X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
A collection of essays by distinguished scholars, this book delineates a substantial conception of democracy, the great promise as well as the pitfalls of a democratic mentality and culture. These essays go beyond the institutional and formal descriptions of democracy to its underlying cultural context — expressed both historically and analytically, descriptively and normatively.

Author: Michael Gorman
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 0813213770
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
The essays in this volume, written by a mix of well-established and younger philosophers, bridge divides between historical and systematic approaches in philosophy as well divides between analytical, continental, and American traditions.